Excited Heavy Baryons and Their Symmetries I: Formalism

This is the first of two papers to study a new emergent symmetry which connects orbitally excited heavy baryons to the ground states in the combined heavy quark and large $N_c$ limit. The existence of this symmetry is shown in a model-independent way, and different possible realizations of the symmetry are discussed. It is also proved that this emergent symmetry commutes with the large $N_c$ spin-flavor symmetry.